


Who Mourns for Ganymede

by fresne



Series: Voyages of the Bakerstreet [26]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Age Difference, Age Regression/De-Aging, Genderswap, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Miscarriage, Not for the main characters who get the generic dub-con of heat while married, Other, ipreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-23 04:35:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 14,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16612055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: While on a standard survey mission, the Bakerstreet encounters two enigmatic and powerful aliens that claim to be ancient Greek gods. What occurs may change all of their lives forever.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sherlock will be de-aging himself here for fun and role play and there will be some gender switching. Given the conclusion for that, pay attention to the tags. Given this may be triggering, I'll mention this story sets in motion some things, but isn't an uber plot story.
> 
> John is 30. Somewhat importantly (eventually), the Bakerstreet is 10. Sherlock and John have known each other for over a decade.

The air was thick with the smoke of laurel leaves. Apollo kissed the smoke and sent it out over the wine dark waves that lapped upon the shore. Behind him, Ganymede's funeral fire gave up its last ember to burst into the night wept sky.

The fires devouring the towers of fair Illium, of Troy, had burned out weeks ago and grown dark as the last heroic Mycenaean ship left heavy on the water, full of treasure and Trojan slaves.

Sky Father, for that was his name, though to the Greeks he was Patḗr Zeus, followed Ganymede's ember. Shooting as a star from the horse loving plain where the towers of Ilium no longer touched the sky.

Apollo did not want to follow, but his sister, star showering Artemis said only, "Brother, it's time."

"Without their worship, we'll spread thin as a moth's wings on the wind. Without their love, we'll grow weary as a tree in winter." He pleaded.

Cold cruel Artemis, her face caught in the eternal dew of youth, repeated, "Brother, it's time."

Apollo looked to where fractious Dionysus sipped his last draught from the cup of Ganymede. Clay, it shattered as he tossed it against the rocks. With a wild laugh, for how else could twice-born Dionysus laugh, he too became a shooting star to follow their father, but on no straight course. He zig zagged into the stars.

"Brother." Silver kissed Artemis squeezed his shoulder.

"Do not tell me again that it is time," said Apollo. "I gave them the staff Asclepius and medicine, not the apple of discord. I have given more music than I let my arrows fly. I led the muses, my daughters born by human women graced with my love, to teach them science. Music. How to calculate the curve of this world. How to write and remember what is long since done. I will not abandon them because of one conflict."

"One conflict? You had your part to play in the fall of Troy. We all did. We took sides and look what happened? Will you strangle them in the crib to only learn what you have to teach, and no more?"

His twin let go. She shot past him a silver star, straight and true, into the night sky.

Apollo saw no reason they should leave. "I would not strangle them."

There were no gods left to answer him. There was only laurel smoke. Its own silent reproach to be ever worn upon his brow as a reminder that his love was not always a grace.

Apollo took one last look at the shore. He lingered until the sun kissed the sky. The sun that would shine after he left. For all he'd taken claim for its light. He stayed just till then.

Heart weary, he followed the gods back to the world of Olympus far from Aegean shores.


	2. John's POV

John had worn a Roman toga before. He'd been stuck being a poor murdered extra in _Titus Andronicus_ at age seven. He'd been to parallel Roman Earth. He knew there was more to it than wrapping a sheet around him. Although, Mr. Garak's set of instructions for the care and wear for any of his bespoke garments were not normally this lengthy.

But if for Sherlock's birthday, Sherlock wanted to be a newly enslaved adolescent in ancient Rome, who after being worshiped into a life of sybaritic pleasure for the afternoon, saved the life of his powerful new master during the eruption of Pompeii, then so be it. It was Sherlock's birthday and it was always a nightmare for John to find him a present he wanted.

Sherlock might have referred to the Vesuvius' eruption as an orgasm and that there was to be sex in a hot bath.

But the key word was worship.

It was simply a thing that their fantasies took different forms.

For John's last birthday, after John had dance-flirted with the jet set at Area 51 in 1970s New York in a fairly ridiculous baby doll white lace dress, Sherlock had taken him over his knee and spanked him once for every year of his life before fucking his bright red arse on a balcony. It had been fantastic. So, John was determined that Sherlock wasn't going to know what hit him. If Sherlock wanted cloud soft worship. Affirmation on adoration. Then John was more than happy to make that happen.

Which was all fine and good, but he hoped he didn't face plant in this outfit that was supposed to show he was a high ranking ancient Roman patrician and consul.

He passed Ms. Wora, one of the new geneticists on-board talking to Mr. Melas, their new Big Data Analyst technician. An unexpected side effect of John's study had been the flood of applications to join the crew from scientists with far more PhDs than John had years in Starfleet excited by the research they saw coming out of the Bakerstreet. John might have been intimidated at a previous point in his life, but by now he could swan by them in his current ridiculous outfit without turning a hair.

Course, John was happy that Mr. Melas brought some expertise in analyzing the data that was coming in and made a mean baklava for the Augment Society bringing the number of omegas on board to fifteen.

Mr. Melas said, "Doctor Watson, what a lovely Toga Trabea. Is that part of the usual uniform?"

John, who was about to lose the plot on the folds of fabric, stopped. "Thank you. Oh, you know Roman togas, they're all the rage."

Melas tilted their head. "I've always preferred an Athenian chiton myself. Easier to walk in, but to each their own." Melas grinned at Wora. "Thanks for the invite for coffee, ma'am. I'd be happy to learn more about how things work on the Bakerstreet. But I'm afraid I'll be late for my shift."

Melas left them standing in the hall.

Wora blew out a breath and asked the corridor, "What does an omega look for in a Normal Human? Hypothetically speaking."

"Hypothetically speaking, Mr. Melas is an expert in analyzing obscure trends in data, speaks eight non-Terran languages, can recite the Illiad in ancient Greek – a fun fact they mentioned at the Getting to Know You Aug Soc the previous week – and recognizes what kind of sheet I've currently got wrapped around me like an idiot. If you're interested in more than coffee, I'd start there."

Then since John wasn't making memories in the hallway watching Wora pine, he picked up the trailing ends of his toga before it tripped him and made his way to the holodeck.

Stepped inside and on reaching the narrow Roman bordello, stood there more than a bit stunned. Breath captured at the first breath of Sherlock's scent. Heart beating like some moon struck madman in a play. Like a lover declaiming his love for the moon over a cup of plum wine.

Even knowing that Sherlock intended to use the transporter to turn himself into a soft cheeked, big eyed twink for his special day, John found himself stopping to take it all in. Bedazzled. A fool for his love. Not because this was his kink. Frankly, he preferred Sherlock his normal height and mass, but there was always something infinitely delicious in the thought of fulfilling Sherlock's fantasy of being the smaller one for once. He looked so utterly delighted in how he looked. 

Sherlock had stimmed his hair to grow down to his waist for the occasion, curls turned to midnight waves that served as a bare sort of garment for his naked body. His oiled and naked body. He moved and a wave parted perfectly – John knew he must have been practicing – to reveal yet more pale glowing skin.

Their eyes met. That straight yet curved red bow mouth curved – he was wearing some sort of lip tint – before she slipped into character. Sherlock's pleasure in being admired, as always an aphrodisiac, but even more that so now Sherlock finally really got that pleasing Sherlock was an aphrodisiac for John as well.

It had taken so many years to get both of them this comfortable with each other's desires and it was wonderful that they were there now.

His genius had purposely lit the dimly lit bordello to give him an across the eyes spotlight like a film noire dame and was showing more poise than any teen had ever had.

John wasn't going to spoil Sherlock's fantasy by telling him his actual age was there to see for anyone who looked him in the eyes.

"Sir," said the holographic pimp bowing ridiculously low, "what an honor to have you in my humble establishment." He waved up at paintings over a row of small cubicles. "These indicate the specialties of each of my slaves." The paintings depicted two and three figures involved in variations of fellatio, intercural, vaginal, and anal. The teens below each sign smiled at John eagerly. They looked completely uninteresting to John, while Sherlock shone like a fair nymph. Seriously, beyond being beautiful, the brilliance of the way Sherlock had lit the scene deserved an award.

John would have to compliment Sherlock on that when they were done.

It also made John feel like satyr. The thumping groaning sounds of vigorous sex behind the drawn curtains didn't help.

Sherlock, of course, genius that he was, twisted his newly young body as if he were shy. As if he hadn't asked for precisely this. To be debauched for his birthday.

There was no painting over his cubicle. John reached out and captured Sherlock's chin, met Sherlock's eyes, midnight blue in the dimly lit brothel. "And what is this celestial beauty's specialty?"

The pimp smiled unctuously and put his hand over his heart. "With a truly discerning eye, the consul recognizes quality. He's a freshly acquired slave."

"I'm not a whore!" Sherlock whispered, even managing a single perfect tear that glimmered as it fell. "I'm a free citizen of…" he jerked his chin out of John's hand and mumbled, "Crete."

The pimp in his flamboyant stripped green toga said, "An unconvincing liar. As I was saying, the boy is new, both to slavery and his new trade. He has yet to be… broken to a specialty." The pimp wiped sweat from beneath his thin strands of hair. "Normally, I wouldn't have put him out, but overwhelmed by the honor that comes of your visit, I wanted to give you every choice."

John leaned down and with his rare advantage of height, inhaled Sherlock's sent where his neck met his shoulder. "I'll take him."

"He'll be quite expensive," said the pimp. Wiping his brow again.

John pulled back and spread his hands wide. "You think me a merchant to quibble over price." He glanced at the curtains. "However, I am not for common pleasures. I'll have him in the comfort of my villa."

"I'm sure the consul will do an excellent job of breaking our young Greek to Roman use there."

John stepped out of the narrow door and into a cobbled street. There was a silk lined litter waiting outside with four massive holographic slaves in rich attire. Sherlock was tossed into it with John, who was not going to break character and help Sherlock. Then again, given the way Sherlock was bravely glowering at him, it was in character for John to trace a finger along his soft cheek, earning himself a shocked look. "You are quite beautiful. The more so now that I truly see you in Helios' light."

"I had no hand in the symmetry of my features," was Sherlock's scowling reply.

"Then we'll praise the gods," said John, moving his hand to lightly glide along Sherlock's slender neck.

Sherlock turned away to glare up at Mount Vesuvius, puffing away over the sea side town of Pompeii. "The gods' favor can be fickle."

"Then I must enjoy their blessing while I can." John pushed back Sherlock's hair. "And enjoy Venus revealed." Sherlock blushed.

They arrived at John's sea side villa. They were greeted by metal chimes in the shape of a flying cock surrounded by tiny labial bells that rustled in the ocean breeze. Sometimes John did wonder at the decorating style that Sherlock sometimes ascribed to him in some of these fantasies, but he managed not to laugh, which was a near thing.

Inside the villa were some equally interesting wall murals. Goat legged satyrs with immense cocks fucking dryads still half merged with their trees. Zeus in the form of a swan getting it on with a delighted looking Leda. A manticore buggering a yowling sphinx and the like.

When he was done blinking, John told the holographic servant waiting for them, "I would like to bathe my guest."

Sherlock's gasped, as he hadn't asked for the bath. Then with a surly toss of his inky waves of hair, he said, "They already cleaned me out for your pleasure," another toss, "sir."

"Then for my pleasure, you'll bathe again," said John, who was more than happy to take off both the toga and tunic, and sink into a raised metal tub heated by a small wood burning oven. It overlooked both the foam flecked sea below and, of course, the smoking volcano.

Sherlock stood just at the top of the small set of stairs into the tub before lowering one newly slender foot into the heated water. He looked warily, hungrily, at John's semi-aroused cock. "Shall I arrange myself over the side of the tub, master. For your pleasure?"

John laughed. Sherlock wasn't getting off that easily. "I believe I said I wanted to clean you." He patted the surface of the water in front of him. "Sit here, so I can do just that."

Sherlock's unwrinkled forehead folded in puzzlement before easing himself into the lapping water. If Sherlock thought he'd just been going to get a simple fuck for his birthday, then John was glad to disappoint him.

Sherlock sat down gingerly on the edge of the seat in front of John.

He shivered as John slowly dragged a sea sponge over his lissome back. Over his pert rounded buttocks. His slim calves with none of the obvious muscle they'd acquire in later years. He pushed Sherlock to lie on his back in the water. Hair floating like a cloud. Cradled that ever thinking brain in his hands. Supported his back with his knees. Simply took a deep breath. Then another. Until they were breathing as one.

He gently pressed the tips of his fingers where Sherlock's spine met his skull. Fanning them out to further cup the edges of Sherlock's skull. Rubbing the pads of his fingers along the sides. He'd watched endless vids on scalp massages leading up to this. Sherlock wasn't the only one who could do research.

"Sir?" said Sherlock, "Don't you want to…"

"Shh…" said John. "You're mine to do with as exactly as I please, and it pleases me to do this. Breath in."

Sherlock took in a deep breath.

"Deeper. I want ever mouthful of air to be for me. I want to fill you."

Sherlock inhaled again. His hips moving restlessly up above the water. His precious cock, somewhat smaller given Sherlock's current age, peeked pale periscope above the warm water.

"Deeper."

Sherlock drew in a shuddering breath and John reached down. Sliding his fingers over Sherlock's collarbone. Vulnerable as a bird's wing, for all that John knew that even at this age Sherlock was incredibly strong. Durable. Luscious. Red full lips open wide and pulling in a deep breath. Holding it and letting it go.

"Good. Again. Deeper." John pressed his lips to those open lips as they inhaled. Nothing more than suction as he let out his own breath. Then moving to sit again. "Again." Gathered up falls of silken hair to rub the tips of fingers into Sherlock's scalp. Drawing moans and twisting hips with nothing more than hands in Sherlock's hair. Fingers circling Sherlock's scalp.

"Deeper."

Another thrust up. "Please, I, sir, don't you want to take me with your enormous cock?"

"I want you to breath for me."

Sherlock shuddered as he inhaled and jolted as John parted his legs to wrap them around Sherlock's willowy body. Brushed nothing more than the balls of his feet against Sherlock's lovely little cock. Gripped him tight between his thighs and held him as Sherlock jolted in a sudden release that had him crying out like one of the holographic gulls flying overhead.

When he'd stopped shuddering, John kissed his forehead and said, "What a beautiful boy. You're magnificent." Peppered kisses to Sherlock's face. "Stunning." Lightly nibbled his left ear lobe. "Intoxicating."

Sherlock moved his hand over his groin, as if embarrassed, even managing a flush, which might have been the heat of the water.

John pushed Sherlock's hands away. "It would be a sin to hide the beauty that the gods created. In any case," he winked at him, "now I have to clean you all over again." He moved to sit opposite Sherlock. Tenderly cleaned Sherlock's pale narrow chest with the soft sponge. His slender arms. The bottom of his feet. Small. Pink. Delicate. Flexible. His firm thighs. Spreading them wider and wider, as Sherlock's breath came faster and faster. "And of course, I can't neglect this." He brushed Sherlock's cock with the sea sponge. It was hard again.

Sherlock shifted his hips up.

John pressed Sherlock's thighs down with the palms of his hands. "Not yet my beauty."

John bobbed his head under the water to lick and stroke. Coming up for air as needed. Sherlock lasted somewhat longer before he came again in the water.

As John lifted his dripping head, he smiled at Sherlock's pleasure dazed expression.

"Sir, I… they said that," said Sherlock around gulps of air, "That it was my duty as a slave to be taken. Not the other way around." His feet moved back and forth in the water. His hair, a tangled thicket, lay damp around him. He spread his legs. "Please."

"You are amazing. Wonderful. Responsive. Perfect. You've come exactly as I desired. Done exactly as I wanted. Needed." John climbed out of the tub. He waited patiently for Sherlock to get out on pleasure limp legs. Motioned him to sit upon a short wide ebony stool. John had programmed a brush on a tray, not knowing the bounty Sherlock would bring. John groomed his beautiful groaning, purring boy. He brushed his long wavy hair. Taking extra care to rub the bristles of the brush against his scalp. To tell him how brilliant, wonderful, amazing he was. Compliment his blushing cheeks. The delicate curve of his changeable eyes. The base of his neck.

Sherlock looked shyly, the twinkling minx, down at the tiled floor. Small wonder given the pornographic mosaic there. "Sir, I'm clean. Where does master want to take me?" Shy, but moving to stand up. "Please, sir."

John stepped back. "It pleases me to take you here. Where you are."

There was a small bowl of grapeseed oil mixed sitting on a tray. John had arranged for that in advance. Nothing but real oil to rub into every inch of Sherlock's skin until he was glowing even more. Breathing quickly. Hard. Lovely cock standing once more at attention. John rubbed that with the extra virgin olive oil as Sherlock's hips move restlessly.

"Sir, please. Let me please you." Sherlock's narrow chest was moving rapidly. His eyes wide and silvery.

"You are." John placed one hand under Sherlock's belly as he pushed down with the other on Sherlock's back. Bending him until his face was by his ankles and all those lovely waves of hair spilled forward like a tidal wave. Slid his hand up the length of Sherlock's sylthy back to where his sweet little pink arse was now open and waiting. "You mean like this." He slid a finger, slick with olive oil, past Sherlock's clenching sphincter muscles, to dip and tease. Stroking deep and deeper until he found his prostate, which had Sherlock swaying. Gripping the ground. Gasping. John was curious to see how many times he could get Sherlock to come before the volcano erupted. At least three, as Sherlock came on the pornographically tiled floor from simple prostate stimulation.

Sherlock stood up in one voluptuous move. Smiled like no one the age of the body he wore had ever smiled and did a slow backbend into handstand and then to stand again. "Sir. Don't you want me? You've pleased me three times, a lowly slave, and I haven't pleased you even once." He caught his lower lip between his teeth.

"You're a treasure. Perfection." John stopped his own babble with a languorous kiss. For once not getting a crick in his neck. He stepped back and called out to his servants. "Dress my guest in sea silk." Technically it wasn't actually silk made from the fringes of some sort of extinct clam, but the green fabric certainly had a lovely sheen as it shifted, open on one side to expose Sherlock's pale moonbeam body with every movement.

John left off the toga and settled for the tunic that Sherlock had had made for him.

They moved the party over to an open air veranda under rioting flowers. John lay down on a long padded bench overlooking the view of volcano and surging sea. He beckoned to Sherlock. "Here, boy, come lie beside me."

Sherlock lay down on the bench, splaying his legs, because Sherlock did love to play a part.

John reached across him to the trays on the tiled table. He fed Sherlock tiny delicacies. All of them something that Sherlock hadn't managed to hide that he'd enjoyed in the past, but reformatted to look like something else. Between every bite, John stole kisses. Tasting Sherlock's mouth. Nipping his chin. Biting his long neck as Sherlock whimpered, whispering to Sherlock, "I love pleasing you. Perhaps I'll purchase you. Own you. Keep you for my personal delight and spend my every day delighting the wonder that you are." One handed, he teased the labia beneath Sherlock's cock, while supporting himself over Sherlock with the other.

The silk brushed against his thighs as he moved against his genius.

"Sir, I… I don't… I've never," Sherlock curled his neck as if he hadn't kept asking for this. John's genius. John's precious boy for the afternoon.

"Then don't you think it's time you did?"

Sherlock almost grinned. It was in his eyes, if his mouth was virgin prim. Even as he spread his legs wide. "Sir, you're so large. I'm afraid you'll hurt me."

Just for that, John, who'd already lubed his cock, gripped Sherlock's rounded arse and pushed inside. He was rewarded with a gasp that wasn't play acting. "Sir! It feels amazing!"

John didn't give him a chance to say more about how it felt. Peppered kisses and praise on Sherlock as he moved. Was rewarded by legs wrapping around his hips. Then curling up along his chest. Then wrapped around his neck.

While the cock chimes gently tinkled in the programmed breeze, John pounded into his very flexible teenage husband, until he shouted John's name. Both when Sherlock came and when John, no knot to hold them together, pulsed inside him.

As they lay there, Sherlock's arms came around John, gripping his tightly, holding them together. Until finally letting go, blushing, looking at the ground. He said, "The afternoon is over. I have to go back. Now that I've… that I… have a specialty… they'll put me to work." His glance up was a challenge.

"As if I would let anyone else have you now that I've made you mine," said John. He kissed Sherlock. "I'll send my man to purchase you and count the money well spent."

The sun was setting, which meant this part of their idyll was ending. John pulled Sherlock to his feet and led him up the stairs to a truly luscious looking bed that appeared to be all silk pillows and sheets.

There was another bowl of olive oil and a set of interesting toys. Since the sun had not yet set, John arranged Sherlock on the pillows to watch the sun court the horizon, a pillow under his hips, while he toyed first with the sensitivity of Sherlock's skin using a feather. The answer to which was Sherlock was extra ordinarily sensitive at this or any age.

"Please, sir," he writhed on the pillows, pushing his hips up invitingly. "I… please sir, I could have more than one specialty."

Who was John to deny that? The sun grew closer to the horizon. Really time in ancient Pompeii didn't move like normal time. Plenty of time to stretch Sherlock's sphincter muscles with the smallest of the wooden dildos, while teasing his labia with the larger. Size was lovely and all, but knowing where Sherlock's prostate and graffenberg spots were was better. John had Sherlock coming before he'd made it to the largest dildo, and after that, he rolled Sherlock over to enthusiastically enjoy another round of making a two backed beast. All the better because John could see how happy Sherlock was.

When they were done, the sun finally set with a flash of green on the horizon. There was time to cuddle Sherlock against his front, before Vesuvius belched fire. It was slightly disconcerting to be snatched up in arms that didn't look strong enough to hold him and yet be held. Sherlock jumped from the second story of the building and ran for the sea. Behind them there was the smell of Sulphur, and John really hoped nothing had gone wrong with the safety controls, because he didn't like the idea of dying on Sherlock's birthday.

Instead, they made it to the sea, where Sherlock jumped into the waters. John hadn't been entirely clear what Sherlock had intended for this portion, but as it turned out there were a pod of dolphins that quickly carried them out into the sea where a giant clam shell waited for them to climb into. John clambered on wet and salty. His question of "What's going on?" was genuine, as he waited for this fantasy's secret.

"I'm the son of Typhon and Echidna," said Sherlock very earnestly. If John hadn't known better, he'd have thought Sherlock was genuinely confessing to being the son of monsters. Then again, he already knew all about that. "I was captured while swimming in shallow waters and kept from the water that gives me my power. You restored me to health when we bathed together. Treated me so well that when my cousin, Vulcan, destroyed Pompeii to save me, I saved you." His smile was fierce and feral.

John leaned back in the shell, which was well lined with a spongy sort of substance. He let his legs fall apart. "What could I do to please a god?"

It would seem that the godling was most pleased to rock the giant clam shell with the force of their motion grappling, moving, driving against each other. Cocks moving slickly between thighs. But John supposed that's what the humpbacked whales that came to steady the shell were for. As Sherlock knotted inside him, he felt the tingle that meant that his godling was healing John of all his ills with his magic cock, which had John giggling through his release.

"What?" said Sherlock, holding him close.

Screw character. John said, "I love you," and left it at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Who_Mourns_for_Adonais%3F_(episode)  
> http://www.crystalinks.com/romeclothing.html  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothing_in_ancient_Rome  
> https://www.thoughtco.com/six-types-of-toga-in-ancient-rome-117805  
> https://www.ancient.eu/article/20/ancient-greek-clothing/  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_art_in_Pompeii_and_Herculaneum


	3. Sherlock's POV

It had felt good to confess, in a sort of way, his origins to John. Even if it wasn't news. Purging the feeling of it. Confessing over and over again. Even if there was one more thing that he possibly ought to share.

But really, with all the parallel Earths they'd encountered over the years with their variations on diseases caused by tinkering with human DNA, the longevity through the same, the idea that actual Augments had been engineered elsewhere wasn't that great a leap. And really, Sherlock thought even if Mummy hadn't explained it to him after he'd woken from his coma long ago, it should be obvious given that the Breen had sought Mummy and the others out. Like and unlike.

Nothing he needed to worry about now. Not on his birthday. He already glowed, _every hearth in the memory palace blazing with how tenderly John had adored him_. _His every corridor was a summer's day from how John had worshipped him. His inland sea sparkled with how John loved him._

The clam shell swayed with the motion of the waves.

The holographic stars came out. Dolphins sang a song with mermaids. Sherlock wrapped his arms around John and felt happy.

Happy to be alive. Happy to be in love. Happy to be in this moment.

As was part of the magical alchemy of sex with John, his husband's scent had shifted again as they coupled growing sultry on Sherlock's tongue.

John said, "We should go."

Sherlock was by no means ready to go. Was ready to couple with John again beneath the stars while mermaids sang melodies to them.

As he finished earning John's praises, John laughed, a sound that tugged on Sherlock's very center. "Happy birthday."

They were kissing softly as klaxons went off for a red alert.

Sherlock grinned because this had been a fairly perfect birthday, but really all it had lacked was this. Sherlock threw on his silk himation and ran for the bridge. Past crew heading to their stations, John close behind him in his tunic.

Hudson got off of the command couch as they reached the bridge. "Something has stopped the ship. We put out a probe to see what kind of energy field we're caught in and…" the display changed. They were apparently caught in a giant green hand.

A voice boomed over the coms. "Welcome, my Terran children. You've left behind wine dark seas to sail the stars as I was certain you would. Where I have waited for you."

"We," said another voice. "Don't forget me." A humanoid appeared on the bridge dressed in a Greek chiton. The figure had long black curling hair wreathed with grape leaves. "I am twice born Dionysus, god of wine and madness, and the blowhard currently plucking your ship in the starry shawl of night is arrow wielding Apollo, while you," they looked at Sherlock, "are simply gorgeous."

Sherlock stepped back, suddenly aware that he was wearing a silk himation, open on one side, and very little else.

The figure came closer. "My beauty, tell me you don't have an erastês, because I think I'm in love."

_A shadow maiden with long curls running until she transformed into a leaping river. A pale arm pulling away from an embrace that became a birch. A boy leaping over rocks to become a yearling buck. Racing behind them all, the maenad crowd and laughing Dionysus._

Sherlock blinked. Exposed. Fragile. Vulnerable. Bare. John moved to fill the bare spot, an arm sliding around his waist. Firm. His ever fixed point. His body blazing with warmth through the wool. Smelling wonderfully of John and grape seed oil.

_Dionysus smiled wild grapes curling in the woods. Stained fruit on lush lips._

"Glorious Dionysus," said Mr. Melas, coming out of the ready room. "Whose gift of wine makes even the dark seasons full of delight, Captain Holmes is a young hero of fine pedigree, who has been paired with Doctor Watson," they gestured at John, "erastês to his erômenos. To teach him the ways of manhood, even as we adventure among the stars."

"Perhaps what has been paired may be paired anew," said Dionysus, who tossed their hair over their shoulder.

He laid a hand over Sherlock's heart and the world burned.

Not literally. Figuratively. But also, literally in that every nerve ending in Sherlock's body prickled with heat. Pleasure. Pain.

_Spring. Green shoots pushing up out of the earth. No autumn stag, but a soft hare mad for love. Wild. Fierce._

Sherlock opened his eyes. The world was bright. Bare. Exposed. He pulled back further into John, for all that something was off in his scent. It was too sweet. Cloying. A rival. Not what he needed for the heat blooming between his thighs.

Another humanoid appeared, next to Dionysus. "I am Apollo, god of the sun and light. I am he who gave you medicine, music, the arts. I am who brought forth the light in the sky. My beloved children, I am he who has been waiting centuries for you to find us." He glanced at John and Sherlock, and sighed. "Dionysus, what have you done?" In the tone of an aggrieved sibling, he snapped his fingers. John scent shifted again. Growing spicy and aromatic, with the musky blend of the earth after a rain. Perfect. Apollo said, "I have fixed what my brother would have torn asunder in his blundering." Dionysus blew a raspberry at Apollo's stern look. Apollo turned to them and raised his hands. "Rejoice, for you have found Olympus and now may live in ease with the gods."

Sherlock only had time to snort, before Donovan said, "The fucking hell. You're not fucking gods and we don't want to live a life of ease. We've been given a fucking mission. Release our ship."

"Another Cassandra," said Apollo, raising a hand that crackled with a glowing warmth. As his fingers closed, there was creaking sound.

Hudson said, "The field around the ship is tightening.

Sherlock felt off balance. As if his center of gravity had lowered from his chest and into his abdomen. He found that his hand was pressed to the silk draped over his chest.

Melas stepped closer to Apollo. "Please, warmth giving Apollo. Have pity on your children. It's been so long since you've left us." They knelt in front of Apollo, holding up their hands crossed.

Apollo smiled and reached down, pulling Melas to their feet. "At such a lovely request and sweetly given, how could I decline?"

Sherlock forced himself to focus. Examine Dionysus and Apollo. They looked humanoid, but had the power to manipulate energy and matter. Certainly more interesting than charting a nebula. "Perhaps you could give us an opportunity to learn more about you."

"Have you forgotten the gods who made the first lyre to teach you the joy of melody?" asked Apollo. "The one who gave Asclepius his staff and taught him the ways of medicine. I am the one who gifted the Cretans with writing. I am the one…"

"We should celebrate," said Dionysus. "Break open the casks of wine. Drink deep until there is naught but lees upon our lips and then begin again." He laughed and the sound made the hair on the back of Sherlock's neck stand up.

"Agreed," said Apollo. "But not her," said Apollo pointing at Donovan. "She is not welcome. She reminds me of the one who,"

"Spurned you," said Dionysus. "Fine. Whoever wants to drink with the gods, should come down to Olympus. He grinned with stained lips and wild eyes. "And if you don't, vine crushed you'll be."

"It would be our privilege," said Melas. Apollo lifted their joined hands to kiss Melas' fingers. Dionysus, Apollo, and Melas disappeared.

There was viscous slick between his labial folds, which was distracting. He could not be distracted. Crewpersons had been kidnapped. There was a mystery to investigate.

Sherlock straightened his shoulders. "Donovan, send Washington and Cho to Transporter Room Cloud. We'll be beaming to the planet."

John said, "Sherlock," he turned Sherlock to face him. His dear life weathered face above him. "You're…" he breathed in deeply, "an omega."

Sherlock said, "Obvious." Because it was obvious. Equally obvious was that John was now an alpha to Sherlock's omega. The gift of Apollo. An opportunity to experience what John felt like. To know. A perfect birthday.

"Are they gods, sir?" asked Winters.

"I believe in aliens, not gods," said Sherlock sharply.

_Mycroft whispered, "You won't be able to control yourself." Sherlock slammed the door on the memory palace. Every door._

"We're going to sickbay," said John firmly. Decisively.

Sherlock let John lead. At least until he pulled out a hypospray with a hormone shot to reverse what Dionysus had done. Sherlock needed to stay exactly as he was. He needed to know. He cast about for logic. Reasons. "John, if this Dionysus can shift our genders without hormone therapy, there's little point in giving either of us an injection until we deal with them."

He bit his lip, waiting to see what his John would do. Feeling damp between his thighs. Plumper. Fuller. Simultaneously tight in his own skin.

"Fine," said John with a narrow eyed look. Who had to be able to scent Sherlock. Had to spell Sherlock's arousal.

Sherlock didn't resist kissing John to distract him. Sliding one hand down to lift up John's tunic, causing Julian to yelp and disappear, while Sherlock gripped the spongy folds of skin around John's cock that were already firming with the tissues where a knot would form.

He said, "It will certainly make for a fascinating birthday."

Really, it was everything he could have wanted and not thought to ask for.


	4. Alexis Melas POV

Alexis lay back on the couch utterly destroyed. Limbs loose with pleasure. They'd just met Apollo. Just been swept away to a flower lined bower. Had their uniform discarded on the rocks outside the bower. They should not be floating down from a release with a being they'd just met.

Apollo kissed Alexis' cheek. "My love, you are full of surprises." He trailed a hand between Alexis' thighs, which spread wider to encourage the touch. "Truly a child of Hermes and Aphrodite, and so of the gods. I will make you my consort and raise you above all the others."

Alexis shuddered. Apollo couldn't be the Greek god of the sun. They knew that. They also knew that they shouldn't be behaving this way within minutes of meeting someone. Anyone. A god. Swept up and sweeping away all good sense.

"Your thoughts are distant from us. I offer to make you my consort, a queen before all the others, and your thoughts wander from me," and there it was. The petulant sound of a god. No, the sound of every lover that Alexis had ever ended up in bed with. Been screwed in more ways than one by.

They kissed Apollo in answer. Their words shaped by every relationship that had come before. "My thoughts are only of you. I'm full of questions. Are you truly a god? Are you really Apollo?"

"Ah," smiled Apollo. All smiles now that Alexis had reassured him. "Of course, those kinds of questions are only natural. I am a god in that I have the power of life and death." He held up his hand and a tiny sun appeared to glow there. "I am immortal as far as you would understand it. My kind came to your world long ago and taught your ancestors many things. In return, we feasted on your love." Another drowning kiss. "It has been so long since I tasted the love and worship of your people, I am starved for it." He consumed further kisses from Alexis' lips. "Better than any ambrosia."

Alexis felt drugged on kisses and yet a question rose to their lips. Data analysis required data. "Why did you leave?"

"It was not my decision," said Apollo. "My father, Zeus, he decided that we were doing more harm than good and decreed that we must leave. But I have waited for you, all these years. While the others spread thin on the wind, until all that was left was wind, I held on, certain that you would come."

Alexis almost asked about Dionysus, but something in Apollo's expression, in years of relationships that had ended with Alexis most precious belongings set on fire or smashed, they held back the words. A trend to the data that had them return a god's kiss, which turned into further embraces.


	5. John's POV

The moment they beamed down, there was Dionysus holding out cups of wine in a cypress lined grove.

John eyed the cup of wine. It smelled like wine. The tricorder said it was wine. He did not trust the wine. Especially given that according to his medical tricorder, Dionysus was an ordinary intersex Human being.

An ordinary being who had transformed Sherlock into an omega with a touch of his hand. While Apollo had merely snapped his fingers to change John.

John want to bellow and shout that Dionysus should back away from Sherlock, not offer then cups of wine. Although, some part of him knew that was a reaction to the gender shift. It was like going through his teens again, but without the heat so that was a plus.

There was the thought, "Not exactly without heat." Sherlock's scent was amazing. Delicious. The best meal. The most fantastic feast. He really ought to have thought to give Sherlock a suppressor shot before they'd beamed down, but Sherlock had been in such a rush and he hadn't been sure. He'd only been an alpha for less than an hour.

Feeling his own body's new reactions, he was sure.

Dionysus looked around the grove. "This is not enough people for a party." He disappeared and returned with some thirty or forty members of the crew. Omegas and women, John noted. "Now it's a party." Dionysus leaned against an amphora, appearing almost transparent in places. He raised his cup. "Drink and make merry for tomorrow,"

"Please don't tell me we're going to die," said Owen loudly. Glancing at John and Sherlock with a questioning look.

Dionysus' smile was wild and feral. "I am not the god who sees the future. If I were, I wouldn't drain each cup its dregs. Knowing tomorrow's price. Now drink my children, drink, or I'll think you're rejecting my hospitality." Lightening crackled in the sky. Dionysus grew fainter. Now only a head and a cup."

This could go very badly very quickly.

John raised his glass. "My parents raised me in the theater, and I know who created plays." Dionysus filled in more and more as John continued speaking. Filling in completely as John dashed a little wine on the ground. "To Dionysus, who created the first plays and in whose honor each play is held." Around them, he saw some of the others dashing wine to the ground.

He'd kind of hoped they'd pick up on the not drinking the questionable wine part.

John moved closer to Sherlock, not entirely because of Sherlock's intoxicatingly sultry vanilla and honey scent. "Well?"

"He appears to draw power from positive attention." Sherlock pressing closely against John. His breath warm in John's ear.

"It is your attention that I desire, young hero," said Dionysus, who was suddenly standing very close to Sherlock.

Too close.

Dionysus lightly touched Sherlock's bared shoulder. John wished he could stand on both sides of Sherlock, but he was sticking to the half-naked side.

Dionysus said, "We are alike in more ways than one. Hero, you have traits of both genders. Like myself, you were twice born. I see the marks of both births in your body and soul window eyes."

"You can tell what happened to me?" asked Sherlock softly.

"Fuck off. Can't you tell he doesn't want you?" said John, feeling goatish and angry and who the fuck did this curly haired fuck think he was touching John's Sherlock. John cupped his hand around Sherlock's to remind him that he belonged to John. That he was John's to fuck and breed. He bent down and whispered that into Sherlock's ear. Sherlock sighed. Leaned into his hand. His robe thing doing little to hide his pretty little arousal. To hind the unfolding scent of an omega going into heat.

Dionysus drank from his cup, eyeing them both over the top. "I am not all knowing. I am a god of wild harvests, and the growth of things well planted. As I planted the potential for growth in this boy. I'd gladly reverse what my brother has done and be well planted in both of you."

John cuddled Sherlock closer. "My um…" he couldn't remember the word from earlier, "boy-toy here isn't for planting by anyone but me."

"But I am the god of wild harvests," said Dionysus in a seductive tone.

John nodded his agreement on something in that tone, before realizing what he was doing, and pulled back "No." He kissed Sherlock's soft cheek. "He's not available."

Somewhere across the meadow, someone laughed low and loud. There was the sound of clothing being discarded. It would seem they were at whatever the Greeks called a bacchanal.

John slapped his com. "Bakerstreet, beam us up. Bakerstreet." A futile attempt. The Bakerstreet didn't answer.

"Drink deep and know divine madness," said Dionysus downing another cup before tossing it aside. 

John pulled Sherlock back several steps.

Dionysus murmured. "I see. You have already chosen a different god. Very well." He spread his arms wide. "Maenads, attend your master." The crew turned as if one mindless laughing mass.

John took Sherlock's hand and ran.

They pelted through the forest of pine and laurel trees. Above them lightning struck trees, setting them to brilliant blaze. Filling the air with eye watering black smoke. Owen tackled John from one such cloud, and would have taken him down if Sherlock hadn't flung him off. Sun Liu reached out with wide spread fingers, scratching John's skin, but was unable to hold him.

They kept going through the woods until they finally outpaced their maddened friends.

"What was that?" asked John.

"It would appear it's what happens when you anger someone considering themselves the god of madness and wine," said Sherlock, rubbing the side of his cheek. His scent smelling divine as sunshine. Honey drizzled flowers. Nectar. Ambrosia. Desire. 

Sherlock sighed. It echoed in the quiet grove.

A peaceful grove far from smoke and fire.

John had time to think, "I have to have him. Forever. Always," before he was being fiercely kissed by a very aroused teenager in a silk robe thing that draped over one shoulder and left nothing to the imagination. Pale skin and green silk and hands. Hands everywhere. His own hands. Sherlock's. Lips. Sweet seductive scent. Intoxicating. Eyes blinded by fluttering closed and opening in brilliant sunshine.


	6. Sherlock's POV

A pine tree's rough bark scratching at his back. Silk pushed aside. Willingly. Joyfully. Sherlock needed John. Needed nothing so much as him.

Had needed John from the moment that Dionysus first transformed him. From the moment the Dionysian festival had begun.

_"False," surged that sea beneath the mind palace._

_"From the beginning," called the sea terns wheeling over the tall masted ships slicing through the waves._

_"Just the other side of the canvas," said John from his odalisque portrait where he was busily recording every sensation of viscous fluid between Sherlock's thighs. From where the John who was forever golden haired radiant above him during that first heat folded silk flowers into the forms of engorged labia. Where the image of John, who had placed a ring on his finger and declared that Sherlock belong to him, recorded aching need under a blue pine ringed sky._

"This is what John feels when he's in heat." Knowledge an aphrodisiac as fierce as the heat itself.

_Even fainter. "This was what I felt and never wanted you to feel," Mummy whispered from the Portrait gallery. Doors slammed._

All was smoke. All was fire. Pine pitch at his back. John's aromatic scent the scent of the forest. Of the wild. Of everything Sherlock needed. John on his knees, face buried between Sherlock's thighs, licking labial folds and clitoris. Whirled suction.

Sherlock could not contain himself. The internal release – normally harder to tease out – coming like a nova. Hands tugging in love's hair and crying laughter. But that wasn't what Sherlock ached for. Needed.

He needed John. Now. Immediately. The fuel to Sherlock's fire. The light to Sherlock's lens.

Which led to tumbling them both the short distance to the aromatic soil and shimmying his way up John's body. His thighs slick with desire. Sherlock mostly naked and John easy to expose by simply lifting his tunic. Expose his hard cock. Thicker. Longer. With the filling ridge of a knot at its base.

Sherlock lidded eyes to hold back the storm. He crouched over his John. His strong young thighs on either side of his John's hips. Sherlock's own cock, smaller than usual due to age and gender, yet already semi-hard again. John's face, eyes dazed and wide, as he looked up at Sherlock.

Sherlock said, "You looked like this the first time you took me. And I looked up at you just like that." Without a mirror and a time machine, Sherlock couldn't have said if it was true. It felt true.

John groaned as he pushed down. Just the tip of John's cock pressed up inside Sherlock's body. A tease. A taste. Sherlock threw his head back. Exposed. Vulnerable to the one he most wanted to see him. Love him. Need him. Learn who he was and never want to leave him. "You pushed me down on the couch and you had your wicked," he pushed down, air struggling in his lungs at the feel of John cock filling the ache, enormous, slightly painful and yet wonderful, "wicked, wicked way with me." He needed more. "You despoiled me. Spoiled me for anyone but you."

"I fucked you." John growled. Grin fierce. Thrusting up suddenly, the swell of his knot stopping just short of entering Sherlock, who spread his legs wider. Pulled up only to sink down again. Taking more. More. More.  Sherlock never wanted this to stop. His lungs struggling, mind shorting in white flashes, as John's knot breached inside. Stretching him further. He hazily thought that he was in heat. His first heat. All he could do was move faster. Push harder for more.

He almost blacked out at the sensation when John's knot was finally captured inside him. His cock's head brushing all the way up to his cervix and rubbing everything in between.

Sherlock laughed and laughed. It was Sherlock's birthday. A swelling knot and a flower strewn meadow.

John's voice piercing his ears to the center of him, "Love you."

Sherlock shouted John's name. Moving faster now. Fiercer. "Love you." His cock brushed John's belly. John stroked it with his fingers. A simple thing that had Sherlock coming again.  His body clenching around John. Dazed. Soft. Meltingly open to John's final upward thrust that had John's knot locking them together.

Sherlock came, white lights behind his eyes, and golden sensation exploding in his lower torso. Sherlock thought, "This what is John feels," and cried for joy at getting to know how John had felt all these years.

That was the last coherent thought he had for a good while as his alpha's come splashed inside him. Again and again. As he squirmed to urge more and more. Growls from his alpha's lips. Teeth gripped firmly at his neck. Breaking the skin. Claiming him. As light exploded in his body at the imperial knot's command.

No sooner did his alpha release him, did he demand more. Always more. On his knees, forehead resting in the earth as his alpha thrust wetly inside him. On his back gazing up at twin moons and starlit sky. A slow moving light marking the Bakerstreet. Vague thought swept away as his alpha woke from his nap at Sherlock's nuzzling. By his strong and steady alpha release inside of him. Teeth safely clamping the skin of Sherlock's neck. Legs wrapped around his alpha to ensure he would never leave. The knot the promise it was true.

Finally, in exhausted sleep, the storm subsided.

Sherlock woke laughing. Lay sprawled on his alpha, dried cum on his thighs, and said, "These aliens have been without human adoration for thousands of years. They must have some other source of energy. We just need to find it." Peppered his alpha with kisses as he spoke.

John lay there, his head in the dirt, and groaned. "You take my breath away."

"Breathe is boring." Sherlock felt wild. The bite marks on his neck already healing. Already needing to be broken again. "Fantastic. The best of birthdays." Of course he knew that several days had passed and that something was horribly wrong with his crew. But in that moment, he felt perfectly happy.


	7. Martha Hudson's POV

"I'm sorry, Commander Hudson, but we just can't find the source of the energy. It's as if the entire planet is suffused with it, but there's no clear source," said Winters giving off waves of worried thoughts.

Martha leaned back in the command couch. The giant hand was gone, but the engines didn't work. They just didn't work.

The communications array was jammed.

They had phasers, but nothing to fire on.

She opened communications with engineering. "Sh'Alaack, I want you to scan every inch of that planet looking for where the energy isn't. Process of elimination, we'll find what's giving these so called gods their power. Also, I need you to send a tech to the nuclear electrical lab and work on an M-wave transmitter. That should be able to punch through to the surface so we can contact our crewmates."

"Do you think everyone is fine?" asked Sh'Alaack. She'd had one of her techs scooped up in whatever it was the entities had done.

"I am quite certain that everyone is fine," said Martha. "Now I need that M-wave transmitter."

Martha did not elect to mention that given the nature of Mr. Melas' thoughts immediately before being transporting to the surface, she was certain that some of them were more than fine. She didn't even want to get into what dear Sherlock had been focused on. By this point, anyone who had been on the ship for more than three months had to have an idea.

She called up some historical records. "Meanwhile, I'm going to see what I can learn about the Greek gods."

"Assholes is what they were," muttered Hunter.

"What was that?" said Hudson, who might have expected that kind of remark from Donovan, not Hunter.

"You can't read more than one myth without some god royally screwing someone over and stringing up a chair with their fur, or turning them into spiders, or just plain having sex with someone while in the shape of golden rain or whatever. So," Hunter leaned back in her chair and whirled her index finger in the air, "assholes."

After a few pages of reading, Martha had to agree with Hunter's assessment.


	8. Sun Liu's POV

Sun Liu wasn't a child. She was well past her doctoral defense. She'd gone into heat once in her twenties and that had been enough. A quiet career at university and then the wondrous opportunity to explore the stars. To be at the cutting edge of her field. It had come with dangers, but polywater had brought out the painter in her. She and Owen had spent hours making clouds and forests. Sex Pollen had resulted in heavy giggling over cracks in a wall with Khatri. Nothing worse than late night study sessions and a medicinal in her under graduate years.

But in heat, she forgot she was Human, and she was Human. Made for flying in space and charting the stars. Made to think.

But that's not what she'd thought in the meadow.

She hadn't thought. She'd felt.

She'd been made to feel.

Now she felt like smashing giant casks of wine. Where exactly Dionysus had gone, she couldn't say. She swung a large branch and cracked another cask. Swung and swung. Whispering fiercely to the liquid, "My ancestors never worshipped you. The Queen of the West would never have done this."

Eventually, Owen took the branch from her, while she shuddered at the frailty of being Human and a little bit more.

She cried dry tears. Sat on the dry aromatic earth and listened to Owen colorfully tell her it would be fine. The shocked faces of the omegas and Normal women around them belied those words, but still she listened. They'd served together a long time. She was not a child, but she knew the smell of pine would be forever ruined.


	9. John's POV

John kept thinking the same thing as they used their tricorders – unsuccessfully - to triangulate the source of the energy. 

For two and a half days, Sherlock had been in heat and John had rutted with him like an alpha. He was an alpha. John had been an omega his entire fucking life and now he was a fucking alpha. He'd bred Sherlock through his entire heat. There were going to be consequences that John just couldn't beam away.

Unless he admitted to certain things.

Some long past admitable things. To take Sherlock by the hand, ask Julian to shove off, turn on the privacy shield and open his bottom desk drawer, show Sherlock what he had been holding onto for over a decade in some cases.

Plus his cock hurt. His cock had never hurt before after heat before. Now it was sore and he was weirdly tired as if he'd spent two days energetically doing his level best to fuck Sherlock full of babies without the benefit of Sherlock's little fast cruisers doing their level best to heal him up.

Plus there was weird spongy flesh at the base of his cock. Weird instinctive impulsives that kept bubbling up. He kept repressing the thought that he'd bred his omega and if he didn't keep pleasing him, Sherlock might wander off. Irrational instinct. Insane. But the thought was there burrowing into John's brain.

Plus, Sherlock smelled like bread and breakfast and love and sunshine.

Which was lovely and all, but there were slightly more important things to discuss.

Like Sherlock was most likely at least somewhat pregnant, which fine, John rolled his eyes at his own thought. There was no such thing as somewhat pregnant, but John had spent a lot of time looking at Sherlock's DNA recently. He knew Sherlock had the same genetic trait for high order magnitude pregnancies.

"Please, stop thinking so loudly," said Sherlock, who grinned at John happily. "This is perfect. Wonderful." He spun John around and kissed him in a shady fern dell.

Sherlock's scent was almost unbearably rich there in the dappled thicket deep in the woods.

"What's perfect about it?" whispered John. "We've had our genders stolen by super powered entities claiming to be gods and now you're… I've…

"You bred me. I know it. I felt it." Sherlock briefly scowled at John. "You never told me what it felt like when the ovum are released." His smile broke through the clouds again. "It was amazing. I did my best to record the sensation. It was all so different."

"Yeah, well you also know it'll hurt like an asteroid strike when they attach."

Sherlock waved that off as if it was nothing. As if it wasn't important. "I never would have wanted you to have to go through bearing children and the alternative is… I'm not asking my parents for help, but this alternative never occurred to me. To think that if Moriarty hadn't attempted to steal my body and Killander hadn't outright kidnap you, then we wouldn't have been transferred to survey this section while the Galaxy class ships were assigned to investigate piracy in that sector. Without all that, we wouldn't be here. A chaos theory of consequences, because it never would have occurred to me to reverse our genders. And…I could do it. I… my heritage aside… it's perfect."

About dozen reasons it wasn't perfect bubbled up in John's head. Sherlock was a full Augment with all the flaws those original scientists had accidentally created along with the strengths. The very healing abilities that kept him so healthy would make it nearly impossible to bring a pregnancy to term. The thought made John ache. The very thought of Sherlock's delighted expression dissolving into loss. John squared his shoulders and did what he did best. Focused on what needed to done right now, which was deal with the entities. "You know what, this isn't the time to discuss it." He glared at his tricorder.

"John, if not now, then we never will." Sherlock's moved into John's space. Always closer. His scent, intoxicating to John no matter his apparent age or gender. Always uniquely Sherlock.

"Sherlock," John licked suddenly dry lips. Stared into Sherlock's eyes that in the light appeared green as the forest around them. "This is a big responsibility. It will change everything. You've complained about Lucy stopping study programs so she can take care of Eva. They'll be a lot less time for," he waved at Sherlock's current shape, "playing around or research. You love research." Not to mention playing around.

Sherlock took John's hands. Held them gently. Slightly smaller than John's for once for all that firm hold. "I think… I want to hold someone that I created with someone I love and for those new beings to know I love them. That they aren't broken or damaged or wrong. Or if they are, it doesn't matter to me, because so am I." Sherlock kissed John sweetly. Said very softly, "I love you and I would love to share that with you."

John melted into the kiss. Thought whirling, tangling. He'd never been against the idea of children as a concept. Way back when he'd started at the Academy had figured that about now would be when he'd settle down and find a partner to maybe have a child with. For the last decade he had come up against the barrier that he needed to deal with that damn box first.

But perhaps this was a way around that. Still, he was a doctor. He had to mention. "We'll have to suppress your immune system."

Sherlock snorted. "You do know who are talking to. I know."

John forged on. "Even if your immune system doesn't attack them, your body may repair the microchimeric transfer of genetic material from the blastocysts to your body. If that happens, your body will not be able to provide them with nourishment."

"What if that doesn't happen? Please, John. It's possibly not the right time to decide. Hormones flooding through me, but," Sherlock peppered him with kisses, "just think. Your genetic material will transfer into my body as a result of my bearing your children. You'll be part of me forever. Forever!" Sherlock spun John around until they both toppled to the ground. Sherlock straddled John. "Forever, John, you'll be a part of me." His mad genius grinned. "Let's have babies together."

Which a bit implied that Sherlock would have to naturally age out of his current age in order to hold onto the transfer of John's DNA, but one thing at a time.

Warm ground below, John answered with a kiss. There in the woods, nothing but love guiding their actions, his husband demonstrated just how flexible he was. His husband. Mate. Godling. Shining gorgeous vision writhing on him like perfection. Who loved him. Who smelled like everything warm and happy and home.

He was still wobbling afterwards when Sherlock, the berk, changed a setting on his tricorder. "I figured it out. Flip the frequency. I've found the source of their power."

Set off running over some fairly rugged terrain. Pausing to shout, "Hurry up! I'll need to start my injections before they implant." John, as always, ran after his mad man.

They came to a marble temple on an outcropping.

Melas was sitting on a marble bench smiling dreamily at the forest. They were dressed in a Greek chiton. Entirely out of uniform. But given how he himself must look, John couldn't judge.

John knew the look of someone who had been well fucked when he saw them.

Melas smiled at them happily. "Isn't it wonderful? Apollo, god of music and light, and he loves me."

"Mr. Melas," said Sherlock as sharp and snotty as any teen, and as if they hadn't just gotten up to non-heat related extraneous activities, "your crew mates have been kidnapped by unknown life forms, who are controlling their actions. Who gain power and energy from the adoration of Humans. Perhaps the idea of remaining here is appealing to you. Ruling at Apollo's side, as the rest of us take up herding goats. But I think that if they were in their right minds, the rest of the crew would disagree."

John poked him because really that had been a bit much under the circumstances. Sherlock had enough sense to blush.

Melas looked at them. Eyes wide. "Dionysus turned you into an omega."

Sherlock waved that off. "Yes, largely irrelevant."

"No, it's not," said Melas. "Dionysus desired you and shifted your gender. Because," they smiled tightly, "in Greek and Roman society it was shameful to be the one who got fucked. Who wasn't the one on top." They laughed somewhat bitterly to themselves. "Yeah. That's about it. Yeah." They looked down at their hands. "Of course." They nodded. "What do I need to do, sir?"

Just then, their coms chirped. "Captain, can you read me?" said Hudson.

"Yes, Hudson," said Sherlock.

"We think we've located the source of the alien's energy, but it's protected by an energy field. It's too much for our phasers to get through."

"I know what you need to do," said Sherlock looking brilliant, hair everywhere, and his scent everything John needed.


	10. Sherlock's POV

Alexis waited for Apollo to return inside the temple. He appeared in a flash. "My love, I have admonished Dionysus to keep his revels down so as not to disturb our rest."

They made their face be stone. "I am not your love. I am not your anything. I don't love you. I just met you." Alexis stood up. "You're an entity pretending to be a god."

"I am a god, and you are my love," said Apollo. He raked the sky with lightning bolts.

Alexis would not flinch. They hadn't flinched when Danny started screaming that they were fucking their commanding officer when nothing had been farther from the truth and they hadn't flinched when Boris hit them and they hadn't flinched when… really too many to name. Alexis said, "You're as alien to me as an amoeba."

"Could an amoeba do this?" Apollo struck a laurel tree beyond the temple. Or course he did. That's what controlling assholes always did. Stay with me or I'll destroy you. You're nothing without me. Alexis had heard it all before.

Alexis walked down the marble steps.

The captain was waiting. He said, "An amoeba with the power to channel the energy of this planet and the psychic energy of humans could do that."

Apollo grew ten times his size. Growing mildly transparent as he did so.

Dionysus appeared, similarly vast and transparent. He didn't appear angry. He was laughing. "I knew our children would come." His smile was wide. A Cheshire smile. "Children always kill their parents."

"Now," said the Captain, and from the depths of the blue sky, lasers raked the heavens. Blasting the temple where they'd lately lain in love.

Apollo screamed and hurled lighting back, while Dionysus did nothing but laugh.

The Bakerstreet kept firing and firing. Alexis couldn't watch as the temple was reduced to rubble.

"Forgive me," said Apollo, now fainter still. "I only wanted your love."

Dionysus laughed. "I'll ask Ganymede for forgiveness, for it was I who suggested kidnapping him and so set in motion the events that doomed his city, doomed us to leave. But I'll ask for none from you, who journeyed here of your own will knowing the wilderness is wild."

They both disappeared in a sparkle of light.

Alexis did not cry until they were back on board ship and in their quarters, and even then they held back tears until they poured some wine onto a potted plant as a sacrifice.

There was that niggling thought that it couldn't have done any harm to wear the laurel leaves for a little while, but they knew that thought was a trap. Statistician that they were, they knew they'd been down this road a time or two.

They made themselves the meal their mother had made them when they were small, and papa was shouting.


	11. Sherlock's POV

Sherlock finished his birthday week by playing a melody that Sherlock had composed for John. It's title, "To my fixed point in an ever changing age, who keeps me from flying into the abyss and holds me when gravity would have me shake apart, who refracts and focused the light around me until I can see, who loves me for all that I am."

He played it in sickbay while John calculated the amount of immune suppressant shot to give him given his biology.

John, whose body language indicated that he longed to take the hormone shots that would have him shifting back into an omega, was staunchly, bravely, beautifully, amazingly… he was just John. Sherlock's other. Alpha. Omega. Willing to consider points in between.

John looked at him. Blue eyes crinkled. Serious. "Are you sure you want this?"

Of course Sherlock wasn't sure. His parents had dropped nuclear bombs on cities. Decimated – except decimated was the wrong word, because it implied one in ten had died – populations in their last strangled attempt to hold onto power. Their genetics shouldn't be further unleashed on the universe.

Except his fathers had had children they'd left behind. The first Mycroft was part of the chain of reasons that there was a John to love. Chin might yet convince Billy to reproduce with her. Mycroft… actually, Sherlock preferred not to think about Mycroft's romantic entanglement with Elim Garak.

Far better to think of closer, better things.

_Thirteen tiny clusters of cells floating down Sherlock's fallopian tubes. The number of ovum that John's enormous knot, certainly it had felt larger than anything Sherlock had ever caught inside John, had wonderfully pressed to release within Sherlock. Had in turn been fertilized to begin meiosis._

_Nothing but growing cells. Less than a bead of blood each._

_The blood of Augments who had and did love their people. Who had smothered Sherlock with training and protection in his childhood. He did understand that much._

_Mummy, who had gone through exactly this over and over in their early teens. At just the age Sherlock's body was just then._

_John who had gone through variations on this this so many times._

_If just one survived, just one, a part of him and John… someone to love._

"Sherlock, are you sure?" repeated John.

Sherlock was near to tears already from the hormones the cell clusters were releasing inside of him. Sherlock said, "I know…" He blinked away the lakes forming in his eyes. "Perhaps my genetics shouldn't…" how could he say what he meant. He know how John felt about his own father. How he himself had sometimes felt and yet in that moment hormones, curiosity, longing had him saying, "Yes. Give me the immune suppression."

John gave him the injection that would keep his own body from attacking their children. They couldn't all survive. Not that many, but if one, just one survived, it would be a miracle. Mummy had had a miracle with Mycroft. Sherlock could have a miracle.

He was a scientist. His miracles occurred in laboratories. Even there, chaos theory had its say.

John went back with him to their quarters where Sherlock would need to remain for the duration unless he was in a haz mat suit. With his immune system compromised, he'd need to reduce contact with the crew. As it was, John would need to scan himself each time he went in their quarters to ensure he didn't expose Sherlock to something.

Sherlock wanted to ask, "What if one of them survives this process? Have you felt like this when we've bred? As if you were creating a thread into the future and the past. Do you think Mummy felt like this? Are you frightened that they won't survive? Do you worry I'll fail?"

So many questions that he didn't ask.

Sherlock was still wandering about their quarters in a sheet, which was going to be his new clothing of choice for the duration, when John went back to sickbay.

He put his hand over the slight curve of his belly. Really just the curve of intestines. The hormones produced by the blastocysts were only just beginning to tell his long dormant uterus to expand and make a space for what might, just might grow there.

He placed his hand and whispered, "I want to meet you as many of you as can make it. I already love you." How wonderful and terrifying to know it was true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 more chapters in this fic to go BTW.


	12. John's POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An extra warning: references miscarriage and abortion.

John let it be known that he'd be keeping open office hours for the next few days, no questions asked if anyone wanted to come in for an after heat pill or a day after pill. No records would be kept. An offer Julian couldn't make by his very nature.

John kept an open channel for Sherlock to ping him if needed.

Give them both a little space to settle into the idea of this new adventure.

Several Augments came in. Gave startled glances at him with his very wrong scent. John felt an alien to himself. Large. Even though his size hadn't change. Clumsy with a shift in his center of gravity. Prickling angry over a yawning pit of worry. As in love as he'd ever been. Because if he had to feel ever so slightly alien to himself for nine months, if perhaps the answer was for Sherlock to grow tiny combinations of them then there it was.

John tried not to think about it. Wondering at all the ways this would change their lives.

Held Sherlock through the night. Nuzzled his mate's neck. By atavistic impulse unable to get enough of his deepening scent. Touching his belly. Although, Sherlock was still the octopus in the relationship.

That was a relief.

That something hadn't changed.

It was also a relief to be ordered by Sherlock to bring back lab equipment. His hair cut back to its usual curls. John brought back equipment. The wrong equipment. Endured a stroppy rant with far more weeping than was usual. Hormones. John had been there. Still, it was hard not to bristle. Brought other equipment. Went to sickbay for more open hours. No questions to a few more visitors. Was summoned because it was still yet wrong equipment. Ended up having a shouting match that ended in grappling, shoving sex against the side of their bed.

A relief of sorts. A summer squall.

That was fine.

It was all fine. Days ticked down.

Holding Sherlock through a pale eyed glare at the wall. Through the silence of the first loss of possibility. Sherlock had taken a tricorder reading of himself during the day. Of thirteen cellular possibilities, three had managed to attach. A triple chance and there it was. He whispered, "We should have upped the dose. I could have taken…" silence, "or an injection of…" silence.

John whispered, "I love you" over and over. Hoped Sherlock believed him. Heard him.

By morning, Sherlock was back to shouting at Hudson over the com. Was measuring the progress of his uterus expanding in response to the pregnancy hormones. Excitedly planning to expand their quarters into the next set of quarters with Khel over the monitor. For reasons, the quarters on either side were empty. Discussed the ways to divide the space into rooms for three growing clusters of cells. Decorating schemes. Methods to stimulate mental growth while in the womb. Methods to ensure growth at all. Methods to ensure microchimeric transfer from the blastocysts to rewrite the cells of Sherlock's body to ensure nutrient transfer.

Some were decidedly unsafe. Others John helped with.

Sherlock somewhat inevitably had charts. He excitedly told John about them as he got his daily shot. The one that kept bruises from healing. That made him susceptible to disease. That kept his body from rejecting the tiny clusters of cells that were replicating a little more every moment.

The marks on Sherlock's neck turned brilliant red. A brilliant echo of the pale marks on John's own neck. Still there despite John's venture into being an alpha. Changing genders didn't erase scars. Only Sherlock did that.

John nested with Sherlock. Loved. Felt an odd relief when Sherlock admitted one night, "My scent is wrong. It's… I smell wrong." And broke some very delicate equipment against the wall.

Which meant John could admit it too. Forehead to forehead in their bed with the stars gliding by in the eternal night of space. Could complain that his body was wrong. He felt clumsy. Angry. Sherlock could complain about feeling the same. Centers of gravity shifted. Hormones nothing like they'd lived with all their lives. Sherlock admitted that sometimes felt so down in the dark, he couldn't even move himself to take a reading on his current hormone levels.

They made slow soft love with gentle kisses for each truth of themselves.

By six weeks, John was leaving reluctantly in the morning. But Sherlock was studying the latest survey results. Not of his body, but of stars. John had nothing to offer about star maps and celestial anomalies. Time to meet up with the research team and discuss patterns in the results. Melas' neck had a faint pink tinge to it. Their scent had a rich vanilla scent that was unmistakable. His stare had Melas bursting into tears and leaving the room.

Melas came into sickbay later that day. After the exam, they placed their hand over their belly and said, "I'm going to keep it?" Took a deep breath. "Going to do my best to keep it."

It was weeks late to begin a regime of shots, but they did anyway.

John didn't repeat the statistics for successful childbirth among Augments. Most Augments knew them. John asked, "Will you want to put in for a transfer to a starbase?"

"No," they looked around the room. Smiled softly. More to themselves than to John. Smiling inwardly. "The Bakerstreet is as good a place to raise the child of a god."

John didn't protest that Apollo had been an unknown entity.

Not long after, Sun Liu came in, grey faced, asking theoretically speaking if she had an abortion, if it needed to be on her record. For the theoretical child of an entity, who had drugged her and made her do things she didn't want to do, and whose offspring had somehow resisted the hormones from the after heat pill. That would now steal the calcium from her bones, was making her nauseous, could make her diabetic, give her high blood pressure, eclampsia, had a non-zero chance of killing her, would transfer the genetics from her… from Dionysus into her body through microchimeric transfer, which meant...

He stopped her there.

John wasn't Julian. He didn't back up his memories off ship. No record keeping needed.

Owen came in requesting pre-natal vitamins and an immune suppressor with a rueful smile. "Been knocked up by a fucking good lay. Sorta thing my granny warned me about. Sorta thing I worried a good bit 'bout when I was younger. These days…been trying to see what would happen. Figured I'd let fate roll the dice. No one I wanted to hook up with when I was in my twenties and thirties. Figured at forty-five, this choice was a bit behind me. But, been thinking takes a village to raise a kid and we've got one here." He tapped his knuckles against the soft surface of the bio-bed. "Been thinking I'll keep the little rug rat. What do you suppose the kid'll be like?"

"Lucky to have you as a parent," said John. Staunchly. Firmly. He didn't ask about transfers. He liked the idea of his children playing with Melas and Owen's kids.

His children. He could imagine them. All with Sherlock's eyes and wild smile. Driving them crazy. He found himself paging through catalogues of cribs. Slings so the little ones could hear their heartbeats. Sitting there smiling softly into the distance.

The entire crew knew what was going on. Hadn't made too much of a fuss about a captain who commanded from their quarters. It wasn't as if survey missions required much commanding. Thankfully there were no more dramatic grabby hands in space.

During the fifteenth week, with the first and most dangerous trimester past, just as Sherlock was simultaneously going out of his skin with the desire to leave their quarters and settling on where to cut the doors to the children's rooms in the wall, Sherlock started a growth spurt.

He gained centimeters in weeks. Skin stretching. Red lines that smoothed almost as soon as they appeared.

His scent shifted to a slightly sour note.

They woke one morning to find bright red spotting on the sheets. A panicked grab at the tricorder.

Two viable placenta. The third had already been reabsorbed by Sherlock's body. Sherlock said, "I should have noticed it wasn't getting the right nutrients." He said, "I should have been more careful." He said… John stopped what he was going to say next. Kissed him and held him. Called in sick that day. They lay together in silence. The long dark of space passing outside.

A few weeks later, there was another growth spurt. Sherlock was practically at his previous height. John could see how he'd been able to fake his age and join Starfleet so young.

Sherlock scanned himself obsessively. Tracking each cells along the placental barrier. Monitoring treatments.

That didn't hold back what John feared.

One possibility left.

Nutrient shots. Somatic stimulator for microchimeric cells. Everything Sherlock's brilliant mind and John's experience could think of.

For nothing. A few days later, there were none.

John could have wished for ranting. Very much wished for ranting. Instead Sherlock was quiet.

Finally, Sherlock said, "Let's go to the Transporter Room Cloud." John watched him return to his own age. He didn't even need shots to return to his preferred gender. The transporter took care of all that.

John began the hormone regime that would return John to himself.

They passed Owen, moving a bit more slowly, in the hallway. John worked with Melas analyzing the data that was coming in for the genetics project. John couldn't not notice the progress of their pregnancies. He was their doctor. Tried not to think too much about it as they moved from their second and into their third trimester.

Sherlock didn't say anything.

John was glad Khatri was on hand to organize the baby showers. He couldn't have. Hadn't even known how much he'd been hoping until there wasn't something to hope for.

Which left that damn box burning a hole in his desk.

He didn't take Sherlock by the hand and tell him.

Wondered if he should say something. Anything. Pregnancy might go differently for John. He didn't have the body of a god. His body was not too strong an adversary for anything as small as bundles of cells. He was a mere mortal tangled in sheets with a grieving madman.

He didn't say anything.

Certainly neither infant when they made their appearances looked anything like a god, but then again, infants only looked like infants. Squalling bundles of potential and nothing more.

John ached at the potential.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fetal microchimerism is a real thing  
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2633676/  
> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fetal-cells-microchimerism/


	13. Sherlock's POV

Sherlock wanted no funeral for cells. For his failure. His body an enemy to his own desire.

On the day they would have been due, John took Sherlock down to the observation deck at the bottom of the Bakerstreet. They sat over the clear view port and looked down into infinite space. For once, it wasn't a comfort. For all he held John and they made slow love over a reminder of just how small and insignificant they really were.

Unexpected to himself, the next day he sent a message to Mummy wanting to talk, which earned a startling quick reply.

They spent some time, encrypted, in the dark, discussing a subject Mummy had never discussed. The years leading up to Mummy's successful gestation of Mycroft. Their rage at the scientists for creating them the way they had. Rage in particular for the one scientist, who had…taken advantage of their own creation. Pain at each loss. Anger at their own ever healing body. Mummy's centuries old feelings of inadequacy and failure. Sherlock's own. The conflicted feelings when they finally held Mycroft. The first one. Mummy's only body birth with all the complications of that experience. The strange realization, Sherlock should have had it years ago, that Mummy had cloned Mycroft using the cells transferred during their pregnancy.

For once, Sherlock had a straight answer to a question from Mummy. Every fear Sherlock had felt, Mummy had felt before him. There was possibly a lesson there in not sublimating grief and anger into nuclear war.

It was the most satisfying, the only satisfying, conversation he'd ever had with his mother.

When Mummy asked tentatively, a tone Sherlock had never heard from them, during a discussion of uterine replicators, "When are you coming home? I hope it's soon."

Sherlock met their gaze, a face a mirror to his own. He said, "I am home, Mummy, but…" He cut the connection before he said anything else.

Still, when he talked to John, he brought up the idea of perhaps taking a trip to visit John's family.

For the genetics study.

To feel a connection. Perhaps to find out a way to bring up a discussion of perhaps trying again.

He really didn't want to start a nuclear war.


End file.
